The Rules Of Business Still Apply

Remember the dot-com days? When profits didn’t matter, and the new currency was ‘click-thrus’ and ‘page views’? The bubble was built by the general public’s fascination with this new thing, ‘the Internet’, and e-commerce companies along with their telecom counterparts (installing ever-greater capacity) rode the bubble toward a sudden and inevitable burst.

Social Media is beginning its shakeout. MySpace is struggling. YouTube is gaining traction as watching video online becomes a standard media, and Facebook is seeing continued growth, but much of it outside the U.S. as this market becomes saturated and curious Boomers drop off the site. LinkedIn integrates a number of useful applications and solidifies its position as a professional’s social media rolodex.

Now comes Twitter, off its highs of the CNN / Ashton battle for a million followers, a month after an Oprah mention, a curiousity to most and not yet monetized. Studies have indicated that most new visitors stop visiting after a month, and now a report that May’s growth on Twitter was anemic, although, importantly, the time spent on the site (by its active members) grew substantially.

So what’s next for Twitter? I’m not certain, but it is critical to recognize that Twitter’s celebrity users are essentially spokespeople and pitchmen for the site, not a business model in and of themselves. According to the rules of business where a company has an established and vocal ‘tribe’ of followers in its niche, the focus should be to provide value to its most loyal customers (visitors). This may mean perhaps, more integration with the hordes of third-party Twitter applications being developed, recognizing its role not as an interactive medium but a broadcast medium and provide services accordingly, and determine the best way to monetize the platform without alienating a customer base that is not used to be ‘pitched’ with advertising. It is then that Twitter can begin to expand and regain interest among businesses and individuals who will leverage the platform and applications using methods tested and proven by the early adopters.

‘The Oprah Effect’ will only get you to the lip of Geoffrey Moore’s chasm. The rules of business still apply as Twitter attempts to cross it.

Full disclosure: www.twitter.com/jimgardner

Is Social Media Making Corporate Websites Irrelevant?

Below is an intriguing re-post from Mashable regarding the ever-changing face of business and relationship marketing. In the late 90s we used to call Web 1.0, still one way electronic communications, "New Media". I imagine in "NEW" much the same way television was going to destroy radio, radio was to destroy print, and so forth. Yet the interesting thing about the 'new' in this 'New Media' is that it is the first to change the 'old media'... with newspapers weakened (I will not predict their demise), radio and television streaming, and now... old New Media replaced by Web 2.0, the new New Media. Now that's change.

Is Social Media Making Corporate Websites Irrelevant?

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Know when to fold 'em.

I know. With that title, I've put a tune in your head you'll not get out for some time. Still, you could do worse than a 70s classic from Kenny Rogers. In any event, my point, and I do have one, is that that lyric has never been more appropriate in a business context than it is to the changes made possible by today's electronic media.

The Pirate Bay case (click here if you are not familiar) came to a conclusion today, complete with jail time and seven figure fines for its founders. So now the entertainment industry has a win in their column based on foggy reasoning, short-sighted strategy, and a desperate effort to hold on to their buggy whip business plans. Now they just have to leverage that surprising win by filing the same suit against thousands of copycats.

Good luck with all that.

The newspaper industry is no different. Teetering on extinction, there has been no shortage of attempts – legislative and otherwise – to support the newspapers' clearly flawed business model. Think of the effort to start a newspaper today with new investors: The ten-second pitch for venture capitalists? "We deliver news and opinion late, in a cumbersome and environmentally suspect format to individuals whose iterative feedback takes days and requires postage."

Well, sign me up!

From efforts to reduce regulation (rarely a bad thing in my mind) to subsidize newspapers through tax policy (rarely a good thing in my mind) the concept of a newspaper is so central to our culture, or so it is argued, that its simply 'too big to fail'.

Like banks. Or car manufacturers.

It's long past time to simply face the reality that newspapers, records, movies and other media are competing not just with new media, but in a brand new context. Traditional distribution methods for everything from news to music to movies are obsolete, and there isn't a tort or an injunction or any lawyer in the world that can stop it.

One of my favorite quotes on the subject is from US Army General Eric Shinseki: “If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less."

Or perhaps more succinctly put by that other sage, "You gotta know when to walk away, and know when to run."

UPDATE 4-23: Excellent opinion piece regarding Susan Boyle sensation that indicates that the amazing viral nature of the clip has yet to monetize for YouTube or ITV as a result of the battles between old, new, and newer revenue models.

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